The Book of Tea

4.5

I enjoyed this book; it was fun and very entertaining to read!! There's a lot of commentary on Western vs Eastern culture and people (as well as their opinions), but mainly this little book is about the tea ceremony and the culture and tradition behind it all. There were some detailed descriptions and explanations, so it took some time to get through it but just like drinking tea or coffee - I savoured the precious time I was able to spend with it.

“Teaism is a cult founded on the adoration of the beautiful among the sordid facts of everyday existence. It inculcates purity and harmony, the mystery of mutual charity, the romanticism of the social order. It is essentially a worship of the Imperfect, as it is a tender attempt to accomplish something possible in this impossible thing we know as life.”

“The long isolation of Japan from the rest of the world, so conducive to introspection, has been highly favourable to the development of Teaism. Our home and habits, costume and cuisine, porcelain, lacquer, painting–our very literature–all have been subject to its influence.”

“(The taste of tea) has not the arrogance of wine, the self-consciousness of coffee, nor the simpering innocence of cocoa.”

‘Lotung, a Tang poet, wrote: “The first cup moistens my lips and throat, the second cup breaks my loneliness, the third cup searches my barren entrail but to find therein some five thousand volumes of odd ideographs. The fourth cup raises a slight perspiration,–all the wrong of life passes away through my pores. At the fifth cup I am purified; the sixth cup calls me to the realms of the immortals. The seventh cup–ah, but I could take no more! I only feel the breath of cool wind that rises in my sleeves. Where is Horaisan? Let me ride on this sweet breeze and waft away thither.”‘

“How can one be serious with the world when the world itself is so ridiculous!”

“Those of us who know not the secret of properly regulating our own existence on this tumultuous sea of foolish troubles which we call life are constantly in a state of misery while vainly trying to appear happy and contented. We stagger in the attempt to keep our moral equilibrium, and see forerunners of the tempest in every cloud that floats on the horizon. Yet there is joy and beauty in the roll of billows as they sweep outward toward eternity.”